As a childless person these are the kinds of things I wonder about

There’s not a deeper philisophical meaning to this or anything, it’s just finally rainy season in LA and I was thinking about being late for things because you spend too much time trying to pick up every invertebrate on the sidewalk and wondering how many kids are late to school on average because they want to save all the sidewalk crawlies. I will note I personally mostly only rescue snails because they are considerate enough to have a not-slimy hand-hold for me to pick them up by, but I have gotten significantly sidetracked from given tasks because I was too distracted by plucking them all off the concrete and finding safe grassy places to leave them.

I used to walk to the train station with my husband in the morning because we started our commute on the same train and he always stopped to save every earthworm, but I dunno how that flies if your a little kid with no time management skills. I can’t imagine being a kindergarten teacher trying to shepherd 30 five year old across a playground and they’re all trying to pick up bugs.

That, plus is the Commander not THE BEST father? Good lord… you may not have kids, coelasquid, but you sure as hell know what you’d do if you had them, and that’s awesome. I can only parent by thinking, “what would my stepfather do?” and then choosing the opposite…

you may see a typo, I see an invitation to consider the ‘up worm’. Is it a species designation? Or a distinction from ‘down’ worms, which are below the soil surface and therefore home and in no need of rescue.

Ngl this was me as a kid. We’ve always lived in humid places like Louisiana or Florida, and for awhile I’d pick up every worm I saw. Honestly a very daunting task, especially during the summer when it rained practically every week.

Solid parenting logic. Death will eventually happen so at least make it serve a purpose. (i might be adding this idea to my own parenting, keep the moral implications in mind that is) You don’t always consider what deeper message you could be sending is.

The key is to be consistent. As the kid grows older & gains a deeper understanding of how the world works, you don’t want to find out from your own kid that you’re a hypocrite. The idea that the worms are going to die eventually anyway, at least it’s ok to save them now even if you’re going to to drown them on a hook later so you can eat some fish…Because then the death means something. Keeping yourself consistent is something they can count on for their whole lives.

Thank you for the advice pal’ ! If I ever get kids and want to go fishing with them (I’m not very good at fishing) that’s what I’d do.

Oh, by the way, Cole. Love your work, been following it for years, and the Commander is a life exemple to me.
If this guy were real, he would be the saviour of mankind. Not because of its biceps, but because of its kindness.

So, if you don’t mind me making some observational criticism to this whole proposal… Don’t you find the act of teaching a kid, at some level, to save worms just so you can use them later for fishing a bit hypocritical?
And no, I’m not speaking about the eventual death of the worms you gonna use as baits but of the point of fishing which is to pull a fish out of any body of water, practically practically killing it via asphyxiation, and that’s if you don’t gut it right away, only so you can at the end feast on it’s, sometimes intact even, corpse.
I mean, do you find this conistant? Aren’t you already a hypocrite if, for some unkown to me reason, you care about the life of a worm and not the life of a fish?
In my opinion, picking up a worm off the road or the dirt is not “saving” at all. The warm made it’s way there for a reason, and if anything, you only manage to disturb the fuction it’s trying to fulfill at that point in time. Nihilistically speaking, you are just doing this to fortify your own values and ideals while keeping your insecurities about life and death under control.
That been said, this was a fine page, although I took Commander’s words more as a joke to how people often contradict their morals, I can see appreciate the character building momment of a parental figure.

Yeah, I’ve been late to a few college lectures on rainy days from stopping to fish worms out of the gutters. A lot of them probably ended up as bird chow, but it beats drowning.
Twenty-three, though? June-bug is just the best.

It was. Half the job is getting them onto the paper itself without freaking them out. The other half is fighting arachnophobia long enough to escort them out. Luckily, Jumpers are a little more mellow than their skittish web-building brethren.

I spent like five minutes staring at the lady and trying to figure out who she was before I realized that it’s June’s teacher, who I don’t think we met before now.

But seriously I started with ‘oh, it’s Jones? Odd hair-wait nope wrong nose/face. Wouldn’t be red either, wrong figure and I think we’d see freckles. Also hair frizz.’
And ended with ‘wait. That stuff in the background is ABCs and school stuff. And the text description is about children being late for school. It’s the teacher.’

Comments like this are always kind of funny to come around to see after the color version has gone up, and I don’t realize there was a b&w in the first place. I’m sitting here thinking, “What? It’s OBVIOUS that’s not Jonesy, what’s this person’s proble- oh, wait, nevermind.” lol

I don’t pick up the sidewalk crawlies but I try to be careful not to step on them. And if I accidentally do I feel very bad about it. I do move snails in the garden if they’re hidden somewhere they might get step on or if yard work disturbed their hidding place, and I nudge earthworm somewhere where they can dig at their leisure if they get unearthed.

Compassion isn’t sentimentalisim…one’s being decent when it doesn’t directly benefit you, like “I will pick up these worms because they are in danger through no fault of their own”; the latter’s being decent as a side-effect of a cultural narrative like “small things are cute; if I save cute things, I am a good person whatever else I do”. ‘s an important distinction, that.

The downside is when your “I take in all the strays” daughter gets older and feels like she has to save all her friends from themselves all the time, even to her own detriment. Not that I’d know anything about that…

Yeah, it’ll be good for The Commander to teach June that there are limitations that *should* be held. One person can only do so much & if you’re going intervene in someone else’s life, you’d do much better if you know all the facts of the situation plus have some personal experience with something similar *before* you act; a good-intended intervention with bad judgement or lack of knowledge can actually cause more problems without solving anything.

I feel there is a deeper message here.
first of all, she’s in kindergarten,
second, she counted to 23. if she needs to save ALL THE LITTLE WORMIES TO COUNT TO 23… she can save all the little wormies she needs to. XD

how is it her mother is a pro wrestler, and her father is a future space commando, and she is THAT adorable. I MEAN COME ON.

Hey, learning how to count higher AND a solid lesson in morals. The time she spent saving the worms wasn’t *wasted* by any means. You don’t have to be in a school to learn something, ya’ know. I’d say this is a win.

I have this problem with my 5 year old wanting to pet every single dog she crosses paths with. She calls them cute little boo-boos regardless of how big, terrifying, hideous, or filthy they are. I await the day when like a million dogs follow her home and she has a name for every single one of them and then looks at me with those big, brown eyes and asks if she can keep them and the only thing I’ll be able to say is dammit. Thank God her mother loves dogs too and we live on a farm.

This was me as a small child! Four decades later, this is still me. Well, I’ve gotten a little taller, and I’ve moved on from kindergarten and acquired higher-level math skills, but still… gotta save the sidewalk worms. :)

I got to watch the Ben 10 you worked on and… well while it’s radically different than compared to the original, Alien force, Ultimate, and Omniverse in regard in tone, atmosphere, and formulas, by itself, I gotta admit, the first impression is pretty good. And that’s coming from someone who usually dislikes that animation style (like Steven U & Gravity Falls, adventure time).

So yeah, it’s too different to even be compared to the “old” Ben 10 by the same standards – it’s something entirely different that doesn’t try to be Ben 10, and does a nice job at what it’s setting out to do.

All in all, great work, I gotta tip you my hat.

I still miss the old Ben 10 a bit, but that’s nostalgia talking. During Omniverse… hmm… actually more like since after Dwayne’s death, when they replaced him with someone else, it was clear the franchise was running out of steam, going in circles.

The fresh take might be the best thing, and you did a pretty good job. I’m really impressed. Keep it up!

As a parent I have to agree with that sort of dilemma. On one hand you want to not be late, on the other hand you don’t want your child to lose respect for life. Plus it is REALLY hard to say no to that face.

If you’ve ever walked along a sidewalk on a sunny day after a rainstorm, you would have noticed quite a few dead worms dried out and burnt to a crisp on the sidewalk, looking like anchovies on a pizza. Worms definitely come up to the surface for a reason, but getting stuck on a sidewalk or crossing a road can be very dangerous for them. Putting them in some grass or under a low bush can at least provide some cover when the sun comes out again.

(I’ve also seen worms that are clearly bloated and dead by drowning, despite that this article implies that it’s nearly impossible.)

I love this page, but I think you are missing one small line of dialogue.
In the last panel, the way Rock says “I mean,” sounds like he should have said something else first. Like “I’m not so sure,” or “I don’t know,” or “That doesn’t sound right.”

Nah, I talk that way all the time. I just start with “But the way I see it…” or some similar mid-sentence transitory clause. It’s just a verbal tic that’s part of what makes his way of speaking uniquely his.

When I was in elementary school we went to a baseball field after it rained and there were a lot of frogs out and about. A group of guys in our class decided to jump on them and crush them to death. When I saw this I grabbed every frog I could and tried to save them. In the end I’m the one who got scolded for ‘touching dirty frogs’ and the boys got away scott free. Never forgot that day or that asshole teacher. Still regret not punching people over it.

HAH! This one made me downright nostalgic. Back 20 years ago, that used to be me rescuing worms. And pillbugs. And snails. And everything.
I guess I just hated seeing the little crawly things get stepped on.
I want a time machine just so I can go back and watch little me trying to find a good home for earthworms. Is it weird that I find a past version of myself adorable?

One of my few memories of elementary school soccer (first grade) involved the ref calling a time out because too many of the players on both teams had stopped to watch a banded woolybear caterpillar cross the pitch.

They -learned- to have compassion. They were -taught- to value life. Maybe not intentionally, maybe not conciously, but it happened. The people around them and society at large influenced them and guided their thinking.

If you raised a child from birth in an empty room with a robot or something that fed it and took care of it, and it never had any human interaction, no exposure to language, no exposure to communication, it wouldn’t develop compassion. (Except maybe toward the robot somewhat, due to instinctual appreciation for our direct caregivers.)

If you one day put a bunch of worms on the floor of that room out of the blue, the child would investigate them purely because they are strange new objects. They wouldn’t understand that they are living creatures, they wouldn’t understand that they can feel pain, they’d just see them as weird wet and wriggly things that are soft and squishy and can be smashed or pulled apart or otherwise physically manipulated, which the child might find amusing from a purely mechanical point of view.

Compassion is born from empathy – from being able to conceive of others as being like oneself. Interacting with other humans teaches children that other people are like themselves – that they aren’t mere objects or things. And once we understand that other people are like ourselves, we begin to value them, and become upset if they get harmed.

We can also then go on to apply the same thinking to other creatures. If you are raised in a family with dogs, you interact with the dogs, you see your family interact with them, and that teaches you that the dogs are similar to yourself – that they “belong” and are part of the psychological “self”, rather than the “other”. And so you value them and don’t want bad things to happen to them.

And of course, kids can generalize these sorts of experiences beyond what you actually expose them to. If you read them a book about animals and it portrays “cute” animals like birds, and butterflies, and cats, and dogs, et cetera, and they learn that all of these animals are “good” and should be valued, they can then take that idea and apply it elsewhere. So then when they see a worm, they might think 1) This is an animal! 2) I think it’s cute! 3) Therefore, it is valuable and I should take care of it!

And that’s when the parent stepping in and reacting can completely rewrite their understanding of things. If the parent gets grossed out and reacts negatively and says things like “Worms aren’t cute!” or “Put that down this instant!” or “It’s just a worm, stop trying to save it”, that tells the child that they made a mistake and that worms actually -aren’t- valuable, and therefor they shouldn’t be kind to them or take care of them.

The answer is probably somewhere in the middle between empathizing with your tribe and being dicks to everybody outside it. With some like error bars depending on who you get.

Humans and animals actually have a ingrained instinct against killing their own. Sure you get rams locking horns and two pigeons basically boxing each other in a show of male dominance. But there are generally *rules* to these things and humans aren’t really any different.

This was actually scientifically tested well before our time with muskets. You can drill some men to shoot a white sheet. Then you compare that to after-action casualty reports and compare it to the results you got with the sheet. It’s not the same at all.

People are more used to trying to frighten off potential predators and competition because it’s less risky than going straight for the throat and diminishing your population isn’t really a survival trait. And generally that’s what a big scary boomstick translates to.

But at the end of the day, somebody has to butcher that chicken you’re eating and less-than-lethal force is, you know, potentially lethal.

I do this… I turn around when I realize that wasnt a rock or a shirt or something in the road, but a turtle… I have to turn around and get it and move it across the street to where it was going.. As a parent, I know my kids will see this, and honestly I think it helps send the message to help something that may need it. I want them to know that you are never too busy to help something.

I know that I sometimes send mixed messages to my son about things, though I try not to. It really depends on how much of a hurry we’re in, I guess.

Like, he loves picking up garbage off the ground and throwing it away. When we take him to the park, he’ll play for a little then just start picking up water bottles and etc. Have to keep an eye on him to make sure there’s nothing really bad on the ground but the parks are generally okay in our area. He’ll do it anywhere though; stores, parks, at home, the street, the sidewalk. Anywhere.

It’s cute and I hope he continues to want to clean things up in the future because it’s a really good habit to have but man, there are times where it’s more of a nuisance than anything else, as well as occasionally being dangerous. But I try to let him do his thing and promise that he can pick up more later when we have to continue on our way.

I used to do that! One day my parents told me to stop it though, and I got confused and flustered and stopped even though I didn’t really understand. A little while later they thought of giving me a bag and bought me one of those grippers on a stick (they found a novelty one where the the grips were a parrot’s mouth) but I’d moved on by that point…

I’m a snail-rescuer as well. Without fail, the first big rainstorm we get in my area after the summer heat ALWAYS sends the snails (and slugs too) fleeing towards the dry shelter that is our covered walkway. I’ve been known to go out barefoot and help the not-naked-snails to this shelter. My family thinks I’m weird…

I nearly had a mental breakdown as consequence of all the snails/slugs that decided to commit suicide-by-combat-boot in my garden. It mush have just been an insanely favourable summer for invertabrate breeding because I only got over it when I went out for a midnight walk and found that the street itself had about five per square meter, adults and tiny baby snails, and I realised it must be population pressure or something driving them insane…

I honestly had a teacher tell me they were water worms to stop me doing that I cried the rest of the day, then told my mum then wrote a letter to Sir David Attenborough about it, he wrote back telling the teacher how they were wrong and gave me a load of his trials of life magazines… proudest moment of my lide

As a person without children, who baby-sat a friends kid two summers ago and proceeded to go out of my way to crush ants, only to see this kid happily catch butterflies and tear their wings off based on my ant murder…. Yeah, no, let the kid save ALL the worms.

I love the Commander because despite how much of a badass he is (he runs a company that helps keep some of the biggest badasses in fiction in line, for crying out loud), he’s still a loving, wonderful father who can be a big ol’ teddy bear of a softy sometimes.

I’ve taught both preschool and kindergarten…when you’re herding large groups of them around, sadly most will, in order of frequency, 1. ignore the worms, 2. scream and try to give them a wide berth, or 3. try to stomp them into oblivion.

This can be bad in some cases! If you see a turtle trying to get somewhere and they aren’t in immediate danger, do not pick them up! Turtles are slow but they know what they’re doing. Moving a turtle will disorient it and make it harder to get to its destination.

Once upon a time, there was an old man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach every morning before he began his work. Early one morning, he was walking along the shore after a big storm had passed and found the vast beach littered with starfish as far as the eye could see, stretching in both directions.

Off in the distance, the old man noticed a small boy approaching. As the boy walked, he paused every so often and as he grew closer, the man could see that he was occasionally bending down to pick up an object and throw it into the sea. The boy came closer still and the man called out, “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”

The young boy paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean. The tide has washed them up onto the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves,” the youth replied. “When the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them back into the water.”

The old man replied, “But there must be tens of thousands of starfish on this beach. I’m afraid you won’t really be able to make much of a difference.”

The boy bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned, smiled and said, “It made a difference to that one!”

well thats cool your still doing teh good parent job, saying from the babysitting in teh office when the young’n was talking so much (commander aint listen’n tho) till she was interrupeted by a co worker, who in turn got yelled at.. and a Thankya daddy was the end panel result:) good job

I did that! X’D I didn’t have far to school so I could walk on my own, and in the small classes I “saved” earthworms (by picking them up and putting them in puddles, since in my language they’re called RAIN worms, so I thought they needed water) and one time I was doing it for so long, the teacher called my mom who found me a few houses down helping the worms! X’D